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- – The blackface lumpenproletariat and American popular culture
- – African American Music – A survival or an actual creative force in today’s culture?
- – Christmas is when the greedy give to the needy
- – The blues, they are no art
- – How criticism helped the vaudeville: The spotlight on Franklin “Baby” Seals
- – Wagner, Beethoven & Negro Folksongs, and … baseball
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Category Archives: – Blues history
“Ragtime Texas”: a hobo songster goin’ up the country… A tribute to Henry Thomas
In 1993, the Scottish pop band Deacon Blue issued their CD “Whatever You Say, Say Nothing” that contained as its sixth track : “Last night I dreamed of Henry Thomas”. None of us will probably ever have dreamed of Henry Thomas. How could we? We hardly have an idea how Henry Thomas looked like. All […]
Posted in - Blues history, Henry Thomas
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– The Rabbit and the Wolf Blues: some notes on the echoes of the “ring shout”
[To read the article in magazine-format, click here] Speaking of his grandfather Omar, who died a slave as a young man, the Jazz player and composer Sidney Bechet once mused: “Inside him he’d got the memory of all the wrong that’s been done to my people. That’s what the memory is….When a blues is good, […]
Posted in - Blues history, - Did you know ? Blues facts from within, - Pre Blues era
Tagged as: blues, ring-shout
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– From lash to cash: one step on the path to the blues
FOR A READING IN MAGAZINE-FORMAT, CLICK IMAGE The lineage of the blues to the African-American slave field hollers, work songs and spirituals has been endlessly repeated. Plenty of historical overviews highlight how these vocal articulations echoed African cultural elements, and how their characteristics have had a defining impact on the development of the blues. It […]
Posted in - Blues history, - Pre Blues era
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– If the blues overtake you, jump overboard and drown
This essay’s title is inspired by the lyrics of Peg Leg Howell’s “Rock and Gravel Blues” when he sings: “Let’s go to the river and sit down Honey, let’s go to the river and sit down If the blues overtake us, jump overboard and drown”. The song was recorded at 20th April 1928 in Atlanta […]
– Bhel, black, blue: some thoughts on the inevitability and the curative power of the blues
In 2010, Peter Muir published his book “Long Lost Blues”, which David Evans qualified as “One of the most important and original books on blues to be published in the past decade” (The Journal of Southern History). Muir is, next to a scholar, also an internationally acclaimed pianist, composer, conductor, and, moreover, the cofounder and […]